Bitcoin may be smashing analyst expectations the world over, but the real victory for the cryptocurrency isn’t its meteoric rise past the $20,000 mark — it’s decidedly lower-tech. Mama, Bitcoin has truly made it, because it’s now being accepted on Craigslist. So the next time you’re looking for a questionable roommate or want to buy that mysterious couch, you can conduct these transactions on everyone’s somewhat nebulous, extremely volatile cryptocurrency.
Initially noticed late last week by a Reddit user, it would appear that Craigslist is making it easier than before for folks to accept cryptocurrency when selling online. While Craigslist has never really had any say over what methods of currency are used in buyer and seller transactions, it’s now giving its metaphorical blessing to Bitcoin. If you log into your Craigslist seller account now, you should see a new button that you can check if you’ll accept cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin in place of cash (or whatever other tender you may choose).
The box is located in the “posting details” portion of the seller form, and can be found next to other more innocuous fields like “contact information.”
Of course, this is, in a way, Craigslist’s way of passing the buck. Since you can’t actually make transactions on Craigslist, having their community use cryptocurrencies could provide the site with a standardized (and for now, trustworthy) method of payment. After all, checks can be canceled, and higher-value items can often be tricky to deal with in cash. But cryptocurrencies could provide a solution.
That said, sellers may not be so eager to part with their own Bitcoins, especially since the currency has been doing so well in the last few weeks. A purchase for 0.5 Bitcoins could be worth $8,000 today, but $10,000 tomorrow. Similarly, sellers could also be a bit wary of placing too much stock in this new form of currency — the extremely volatile market has seen Bitcoin lose 40 percent of its value in the course of a single day.
But if all that aside, it’s certainly a sign that Craigslist, with its somewhat retro website design, is very much part of the 21st century.
